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| Syd |
 Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2015 9:38 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12944
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I was surprised watching Lost Horizon in its restored version than only about half of the movie takes place in Shangri-La. The first 45 minutes is a thrilling escape from a Chinese revolution (rescuing the white citizens while leaving 10,000 Chinese natives to be slaughtered), followed by a harrowing plane trip across the mountains of Tibet (not the direction they were supposed to go) and a plane crash among snow-covered mountains 500 miles from civilization. Except for Shangri-La. The last part of the movie again takes us into those mountains.
Nice movie with good performances, but it gets talky. Ron Colman, Jane Wyatt and H. B. Warner (as the High Lama's major domo) are the best performances. I don't think it's ever explicitly mentioned that Gloria's terminal illness is cured by Shangri-La, or that she can never leave.
Capra wanted to film this in color, but couldn't, partly because his stock footage was black-and-white and partly due to expense. It's unfortunate, because this is a film that cries out for color. Though hopefully, they'll never turn it into a musical......[oops].
Nowadays, Shangri-La would be unbearable because of lack of internet access. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 1:12 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Caught A Raisin in the Sun on TCM. Haven't seen it since it premiered in New Haven prior to Broadway in 1959. The movie version is powerful but very stagey, with Claudia McNeil as the matriarch playing to the second balcony and looking like a man in drag. Poitier is good though IMO a little miscast, but Ruby Dee is perfection personified.
My most memorable moment from the 1959 performance came off stage. In Lorraine Hansberry's play (one of the first ever to concern African-Americans), the mother is nurturing a little woebegone house plant. During the second intermission, I overheard one fancily-dressed Connecticut matron telling her similarly-clothed friend, "I really like the play but I can't understand what the title means." "Oh," said the friend, "it's that little plant. It's just a-raaaiiisin' in the sun. You know the way they talk." Nothing Hansberry wrote was more telling. Or funnier.
The actual origin of the title is from a beautiful poem by Langston Hughes, which points to the hopefulness of the play as well as its only partially happy ending. Here's the poem in full:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode? |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 1:16 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Some of my recent viewing (and reviewing):
Marathon Man
Was pretty sure I'd seen it but couldn't remember a thing, so i tossed it on. It's chock full of actors I don't like and gets draggy at times. I was amused how mid-70's NYers are portrayed as loud and rude.
There are a few good scenes, such as the fake rescue and Hoffman's escape. But there are plenty of cheesy moments too. I mostly had trouble getting involved or taking the plot seriously.
Laura
I can see why I forgot the plot and much about this film. It has a rather silly premise, and a rather unlikely solution to the murder mystery. And mid-way through the film changes gears from a police procedural noir to a romance. Dana Andrews tough guy detective wore thin after a while.
I didn't like the way women were portrayed throughout. Even Gene Tierney's Laura is said to be smart and successful, but she needed a man to get her established and then keeps choosing the wrong types, and seems to always need a man. And nobody seems to care much about the girl who got her face shot off. We never hear or see any of her relatives or friends or even if they were contacted -- the film just isn't interested in the dead girl at all.
Not sure why, but this film often rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the high society nonsense. I was amused when the maid gets a horrible shock that Laura is still alive, and then they tell her to cook breakfast. Contrasts with how solicitous everyone is when the famous writer gets the same shock earlier. Or maybe that high society stuff just combined poorly with the tough noir investigation. Also, all the solution stuff had a fair degree of unlikelihood.
It's certainly watchable, but next time I watch it it'll probably all seem new as well.
Vera (2003)
This was an odd film. An old miner gets trapped underground and then some bald blue spirit woman guides him through surreal visions. This didn't do much for me, though it didn't help that I dozed off for a bit, though that didn't seem to affect the film much since it's a series of odd encounters and trippy images. Just looked at IMDb and one of the 3 reviews is from "Pokerface11 from Chicago" -- and Marylin seem to love it. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 1:16 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 2:21 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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gromit wrote:
Laura
I can see why I forgot the plot and much about this film. It has a rather silly premise, and a rather unlikely solution to the murder mystery. And mid-way through the film changes gears from a police procedural noir to a romance. Dana Andrews tough guy detective wore thin after a while.
I didn't like the way women were portrayed throughout. Even Gene Tierney's Laura is said to be smart and successful, but she needed a man to get her established and then keeps choosing the wrong types, and seems to always need a man. And nobody seems to care much about the girl who got her face shot off. We never hear or see any of her relatives or friends or even if they were contacted -- the film just isn't interested in the dead girl at all.
Not sure why, but this film often rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the high society nonsense. I was amused when the maid gets a horrible shock that Laura is still alive, and then they tell her to cook breakfast. Contrasts with how solicitous everyone is when the famous writer gets the same shock earlier. Or maybe that high society stuff just combined poorly with the tough noir investigation. Also, all the solution stuff had a fair degree of unlikelihood.
Can't really agree with you about the quality of the film--I think it's great, a classic--but your comments are interesting and largely accurate. I just don't think the film suffers as a result.
What I have always felt--well, since I became somewhat adult and something of a hip person--about the character of Gene Tierney's Laura is that she was (this is politically incorrect but the only term that applies) a "fag hag" before her time, and the story beneath the surface is about a straight male (Dana Andrews's Mark) rescuing her from the closet cases (Clifton Webb's Waldo, Vincent Price's Shelby) she's surrounded herself with. The spectacle of the supremely effete Webb and Price fighting over the affections of the preternaturally gorgeous Tierney would be funny if it were not so well played by all three actors (yes, even the minimally talented Tierney is good here).
Totally agree about no one seeming to care a fig about poor Diane Redfern, who may have been something of a loose woman but was an innocent bystander here for sure. But I think it's a truthful depiction of the way certain narcissistic people react. Preminger did have a line on them, it seems. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 2:33 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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There's all sorts of false stuff in Laura that made it hard for me to take it seriously.
-- Price brings the other woman to Laura's apartment when she's away for a weekend deciding whether to marry him or not? And Price really needs the money/marriage.
-- The murder is committed with a shotgun, and Price just happened to have given Laura a shotgun as a present? And where did Webb/Waldo get a shotgun from in the first place?
-- The detective falls in love with Laura just from her portrait? And then even though they are opposites and hardly know each other, we're supposed to be glad they get together and it's a happy ending (instead of Laura making another bad man decision).
Those are the main ones that come to mind.
I guess for Waldo, Laura is another beautiful object in his collection. Normally it would seem unlikely that he'd shotgun her to stop her from going off with another woman. But the film does establish that he chased off a previous suitor and tries to dissuade the Vincent Price character. As for Waldo, that is super-ballsy to commit the murder and then tag along with the detective trying to solve the case. I guess all of the Waldo stuff works best for me. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:57 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| I love Laura and do not care that it is wildly implausible. Clifton Webb's performance is one of my favorite supporting performances ever. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 8:50 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| The antipathy between Webb and Andrews is palpable and extremely believable. Both actors are perfect--Andrews no less than Webb. Both characters are somewhat sympathetic assholes, and the actors play them with scalpel-like pitilessness. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 8:51 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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| So Billy, the appeal of Dana Andrews detective is that he might actually fuck her? Interesting. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:04 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Marathon Man is an entertaining 70s cheese festival, which gave us the famous offscreen exchange between Hoffman and Olivier....and the "Is it safe?" catchphrase, but I have yet to research the medical effects of eating diamonds.
Never saw Laura, but will now. And now I know the correct gender of Gene Tierney. Which further unmasks me as only recently a student of the classic film. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:16 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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bartist wrote:
And now I know the correct gender of Gene Tierney.
Are you quite serious? Well, after you see Laura you will not be confused any more. JFK knew, so they say. Oh, did he ever know! |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:17 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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gromit wrote: So Billy, the appeal of Dana Andrews detective is that he might actually fuck her? Interesting.
Andrews was perhaps the only screen star who ever made the adjective "square-jawed" seem attractive. At least IMHO. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:20 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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For the record, I've seen Laura approximately a million times and never get tired of it. For a glimpse of NYC in the 1940's, there aren't many films that get it better. (And there aren't even that many outdoor scenes. It's just the vibe. Preminger never topped it.)
And I haven't even touched on the amazing David Raksin soundtrack music, which (with a lyric by the great Johnny Mercer) produced a smash hit song. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:43 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:42 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Weed, yes I was serious, sad to say - haven't seen Tierney in anything. Of course, I wiki'd her right away and yes indeed she is made of those lovely XX chromosomes. Part of my past confusion may relate to there being a famous boxer of yore named Tierney(IIRC)*, and so when I heard the name I pictured a solid anvil-jawed Irishman with fists like hams.
* who proves to be, on further investigation, Gene Tunney. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:53 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Clifton Webb is the best thing in the film. I just thought everyone else was rather one-note. I liked Andrews tough-guy routine, and it's contrast with the socialites, through the first half of the film. Then got a bit tired when it didn't go anywhere (or went the wrong way?).
Tierney is really a looker.
She has a combination of a baby-face and sexiness.
Really one of the prettiest actresses.
She hooked up with JFK slightly before he ran for Congress and there was reportedly it was serious, but apparently as a good Catholic he was never going to marry a divorcee. Tierney had been married to the designer Oleg Cassini. Such information I got from a Biography Tv show on Tierney which was included on the Laura disc as an extra.
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